Profiles in Technology

Today's students can learn Russian via satellite from an instructor in
another state, plumb the depths of the Mediterranean Sea while sitting
in a classroom in rural Maine, tap into a university's library system
without leaving their school, or engage in a sophisticated laboratory
experiment simulated on a computer screen.

Their teachers can "talk'' to colleagues across town or across the
state by plugging into a computer network. Administrators can call up
financial data or student information at the flick of a switch. And
parents can pick up the telephone to receive recorded messages about
their children's homework.

More than ever, technology has the potential to reshape instruction
and support active learning. Rich examples of such uses abound in
hundreds of schools nationwide. In some respects, the vistas appear
limitless.

But the high-technology transformation of the schools that many
predicted in the early 1980s has not materialized. For most
students--and most teachers--the use of technology in education remains
elusive.

As John Gibbons, director of the federal Office of Technology
Assessment, noted toward the end of the decade: "Schools have acquired
computers rapidly . . .,but most elements of the instructional process
remain the same.''

"This contrasts sharply,'' he added, "with other sectors of society,
where technology has changed the way business is transacted, medical
problems are analyzed, and products are produced.''

Technology, notes Stanley Pogrow, associate professor of education
at the University of Arizona, more sarcastically, "is going into
schools like driver education; it's another nice piece that we need to
be doing to show the community that we're sort of with it.'' But the
rush to buy equipment has, in many respects, outpaced any careful
thinking about its use.

The question now is not whether technology will end up in schools,
but how to integrate it with teaching and learning in ways that make
sense.

Over 91 percent of all school districts already have at least some
computers. The current ratio of students to computers is approximately
20:1.

Videocassette recorders have become commonplace, available in about
94 percent of schools nationwide. Distance-learning projects are
underway or being planned in virtually every state. More than 18
percent of school districts have satellite dishes. And tens of
thousands of schools are connected to cable.

But if the total number of telephones, faxes, televisions,
computers, and other forms of communications technology now available
in schools were computed nationwide, claims Shelly Weinstein, president
of the EdSat Institute, "for the most part, the school sector would
compare to that of a developing nation.''

What equipment exists is distributed unevenly: with technology less
available to minority students, those who speak limited English, and
children from poor communities.

In the vast majority of schools, there are still not enough
computers to make them a central element of instruction. Not all
students use computers, notes the 1988 OTA report, Power On: New Tools
for Teaching and Learning. And those who do spend an average of little
more than one hour per week on the machines, or only 4 percent of their
instructional time.

In the absence of solid research, widely disseminated models, and
clear guidance, individual states, districts, schools, and teachers are
being forced to explore the uses of technology on their own: resulting
in a mishmash of largely unrelated activities, often with no clear
direction or purpose.

Funds continue to flow without any agreement on whether technology
should be used for enrichment or as a core component of instruction;
whether it should serve as a tutor or as a tool; whether students need
to know about technology for its own sake or as a vehicle for
conducting research, computing, and communicating with others.

According to observers, obstacles to the widespread use of
technology in schools remain much the same as at the beginning of the
1980s. These include the high costs of purchasing, maintaining, and
upgrading equipment; the lack of adequate software that dovetails with
teachers' curricular needs; the absence of assessments that reflect the
complex thinking skills encouraged in technology-rich environments; and
the dearth of teacher training.

The OTA study reported that only one-third of K-12 teachers have had
even 10 hours of computer training, and much of this has focused on
learning about computers, rather than learning how to teach with them.
A recent survey of education majors indicated that less than one-third
perceived themselves to be prepared to teach with computers. Yet half
the states do not require or recommend preparation in technology for
their new teacher-education graduates.

"If you go to teacher-education programs around this country,'' says
Linda Roberts, project director for the OTA's technology studies, "what
you find is a faculty and a curriculum that has, at best, given lip
service to thinking about technology as a resource.''

But according to James Mecklenburger, president of the Mecklenburger
Group, a private consulting firm, the problems with the educational use
of technology "are far more political than technological; far more
human than electronic.''

In essence, educators have yet to rethink a vision of learning in
which technology plays a vital role.

"We haven't built a powerful pedagogy around the use of the
technology,'' says Pogrow of Arizona. "We haven't done the hard work of
designing whole new types of learning environments in a systematic
way.''

Contrary to early predictions that technology would somehow replace
teachers, research has found that only the most skilled and
sophisticated practitioners are able to integrate technology
successfully in their classrooms. Indeed, the initial introduction of
technology in schools can make the work of teachers harder and more
time-consuming.

But it can also be tremendously rewarding. According to Karen
Sheingold, research director in the division of applied-measurement
research at the Educational Testing Service, technology can change what
teachers do in powerful ways. Experienced teachers whom she has studied
say they are capable of presenting more complex material to their
students, that they are acting more as coaches and less as information
providers, and that student work can proceed more independently and in
ways that are better tailored to meet individual needs.

Other studies have found a dramatic decrease in teacher-dominated
activities and a shift to more engaged students in technology-rich
environments.

But such changes will not happen automatically or overnight.

Indeed, Larry Cuban, a professor of education at Stanford
University, predicts that unless existing classrooms and schools are
"altered substantially . . .most teachers will use computers as an aid,
not unlike radio, film, and television.''

"I predict no great breakthrough in teacher use patterns at either
level of schooling,'' he writes in Teachers and Machines: The Classroom
Use of Technology Since 1920. "The new technology, like its
predecessors, will be tailored to fit the teacher's perspective and the
tight contours of school and classroom settings.'' To the degree that
technology is flexible, it will be bent to fit existing practice, he
predicts. To the degree that it is not, it will be jettisoned.

Such predictions have led observers to plead for a closer
relationship between current efforts to "restructure'' the schools and
the use of technology.

Indeed, Sheingold maintains that many of the ambitious national
goals the country has now set for itself cannot be attained without
"widespread, creative, and well-integrated uses of technologies of many
kinds.''

Still others suggest scaling back from the grandiose visions of
technological applications in schools that ran rampant during the early
1980s to more practical and constrained uses. "Without much evidence to
support unrestrained entry of machines into classrooms, reopening
policy discussions on both the how and the why seem to be in order,''
Cuban argues.

Rather than buying machines and then deciding how to use them,
experts suggest, schools should identify their most pressing needs or
problems and ask how technology could make a difference.

"The most effective uses of technology are going to be very
constrained uses'' limited to a particular grade or subject area,
Pogrow asserts, but married to sophisticated forms of human
interaction. "Everybody wants to put a computer in every classroom;
everybody wants to use computers across the board,'' he argues. "The
minute you say that, you're not going to be effective.''

Ultimately, argues Allan Collins, principal scientist at Bolt
Beranek and Newman Inc., it is society's use of computers as tools that
will sustain their penetration of schools. "Schools are in the business
of teaching students how to read and write and calculate and think,''
he writes in the September 1991 issue of Phi Delta Kappan. "As the
computer becomes an essential tool for doing these things in society at
large, its use by students is inevitable.''

To speed up that use, advocates are calling for much stronger
national leadership in the area of technology in schools. "National
leadership is absolutely essential, because it sends a signal,'' says
Roberts of the OTA. In addition, observers argue, the federal
government should invest more money in research-and-development
efforts; provide seed money for innovative ideas; and bring together
state and local educators at the regional level to share information,
pool resources, and think about next steps.

The Council of Chief State School Officers and other groups have
also argued that the federal government could help establish a national
infrastructure that would enable educational information to move freely
and swiftly throughout the nation--via a combination of fiber optics,
satellite, telephone lines, cable, and other transmission signals.

For now, notes Mecklenburger, "the real truth is that the power of
technology in this society is mostly outside of school buildings,
because, for the most part, educators haven't wanted it inside. It's
far more developed in living rooms and kids' rooms and libraries and
museums.''

Whether that capacity will be harnessed to change the schools
themselves--as some have predicted--or whether the schools will become
increasingly superfluous in an information-rich society remains to be
seen.

"The conventional school curriculum--the stuff that schools pride
themselves on teaching or striving to teach--is going to be available
in electronic form,'' warns Mecklenburger. "And the only issue is where
people get it.''

This Teacher Magazine special report looks at a range of educational
players who are trying to harness technology to transform teaching and
learning, even as the debate rages on around them. Some are blazing new
trails, without anyone to offer guidance. Others are struggling in
isolation with problems that confront schoolpeople everywhere. Many
express a desire for greater communication with like-minded colleagues,
pride in their accomplishments, and chagrin over the inevitable
mistakes that they have made along the way.

Although no single teacher is profiled heret, their voices echo
throughout this report, as they struggle--sometimes willingly,
sometimes unwillingly--to understand and use technology.

It all begins and ends with Tana Holloway. She represents the
students at whom everyone's efforts are aimed, and whose experiences
speak volumes about the place of technology in schools. Although Tana
attends a computer-magnet program at Denver's George Washington High
School, most of her classes look little different than their
predecessors of 50 years ago.

As technology coordinator for the Belridge School in McKittrick,
Calif., Matt Revenaugh helped plot a course that would lead his school
into the new age. But unexpected barriers have led to a painful
detour.

Teachers are the key to the successful use of technology-- along
with programming that the sophisticated equipment makes available to
them. But few teachers receive the training they need, and much of the
software available consists of little more than an electronic
workbook.

When Dolores Escobar became dean of the school of education at San
Jose State University in the heart of Silicon Valley, she confronted
both her resistance to technology and the need to prepare prospective
teachers for the classrooms of tomorrow.

As a classroom teacher, Tom Snyder found most educational software
to be little more than electronic workbooks, so he formed his own
company to produce award-winning, best-selling software programs
designed to strengthen the interaction between teachers and
students.

Those at the local level often feel isolated and uncertain about
technology and how to use it. They find little help or guidance from
the national or state level.

Joe Kirkman represent dramatic exceptions.

Kirkman is a state policymaker in Kentucky who is overseeing one of
the nation's most ambitious planning efforts to coordinate the use of
technology in all of the state's schools.

For Tana Holloway and her fellow students in America's
schools,technology's potential remains tantalizingly out of reach. "It
has the potential to be something enormous,'' says consultant
Mecklenburger, "but it also has the potential to dry up and blow
away.''

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